Editor's Note: Since this post was originally published, we're no longer noticing a difference between scheduling/publishing content directly via Facebook vs. through a third-party tool. Our social media team uses HubSpot's Social Media tools, and it doesn't appear to be affecting the performance of our Facebook content. -- 6/12/13

Many social media marketers schedule content for Facebook through third-party software tools from many different companies (including the HubSpot social media publisher). Our work days are spent monitoring and responding to our social media communities and strategizing how to optimize our business pages, generate leads, and grow reach -- manually uploading all our content daily would be far too time-consuming.

But with Timeline rolled out to brand pages, that process is being threatened. Severely. After switching to the new brand page design the minute it became available, the HubSpot social media team instantly noticed how our likes, shares, and comments -- in other words, our overall engagement -- tanked.

Then something magical happened. We noticed that anything we posted manually was suddenly receiving the same attention it did pre-Timeline. So the HubSpot social media lead generation team -- Rebecca Corliss, Kendal Peiguss, and myself -- decided to run a two-week test to compare content published through third-party software tools versus content published manually on Facebook.

We first published content to our Facebook page via two different third-party software tools (one was the HubSpot social media publishing tool, and the other was a very popular tool from a different company). An hour after a post was published, we documented the number of likes and clicks the content generated. Then we deleted the post and reposted it manually from our Facebook page. After an hour, we once more recorded the number of likes and clicks. We did this four times a day for two weeks. After the two-week period, we ran the numbers and found two key results.

Note: The results of our study do not indicate whether Timeline itself was the direct cause of the decrease in engagement. However, the sharp decline occurred simultaneously with the drop, raising the potential of the two being correlated.

1) Facebook Is Hurting Likes for Content Published From Third-Party APIs

Specifically, we found that content published through third-party API tools suffered 67% fewer likes than content published manually via Facebook.com.

2) Facebook Is Hurting Click-Through Rate for Content Published From Third-Party APIs

What's Going On?

Facebook's algorithm for selecting which content becomes visible to Facebook users is called EdgeRank. EdgeRank decides what is most important on Facebook for a specific user by taking into account three components:

Affinity: The number of times two people (or a person and a page) have interacted

Weight: The number of times users have interacted (commented, liked) with the content in question

Recency: The time since the content was posted

Last November, EdgeRank Checker decided to investigate the rumor that Facebook penalizes third-party APIs. According to its findings, "When an object is created in Facebook, it is assigned a weight. We believe that Facebook strategically reduced the weight of objects created through the API. The reason behind this strategy would be to encourage more content creation within the Facebook platform. This ultimately increases the value of their platform while increasing ad impressions."

But then in December, EdgeRank Checker announced that the problem was fixed. But it seems the issue has resurfaced. Our team hypothesizes that once more, the weight of content published from a third-party API is being decreased before it even has a chance to create organic weight. Regardless of whether this was Facebook's intention or not, it's hurting marketers who depend on third-party APIs. Some component of the algorithm may have been lost in transition to Timeline, resulting in such drastic differences in attention as presented above.

Timeline Is Good for Big Business, Bad for Small

According to a Simply Measured study featured on Mashable, Facebook Timeline is providing a 46% increase in engagement. The study drew results from 15 brand pages such as Livestrong, Toyota, Coco-Cola -- you know, pretty big brands. How are these companies seeing such high engagement rates when our data shows that Timeline is hurting marketers?

Because big brands have big budgets. They can afford to hire employees whose job is to focus solely on social media content, including manually publishing on their actual Facebook pages. Scanning through the business pages included in the aforementioned study, none show any indication that their content was published through a third-party API. Third-party APIs show that the content was published from their tool by adding a source tag, like the one seen below from HubSpot's Facebook page.

It seems that these big brands have dedicated staff that publishes their posts right from the Facebook platform. Problem is, small businesses don't have the money to fund that. Many, including us, count on software tools from many different companies (like HubSpot and dozens of others) to schedule our content for a full week to allow us to monitor and strategize throughout the week.

The study also doesn't show the difference between "pinned" content or content highlighted as a "milestone" -- both new features of the Facebook Timeline. These features can help increase the visibility of the post by pinning it to the top of your page or expanding its size on your page by making it a milestone.

What Now?

Unfortunately, to reap the full benefits of Facebook with Timeline now rolled out to all business pages, it appears marketers will have to manually update their pages every day. It's plausible that third-party APIs have been suffering prior to Timeline, and without data pre-Timeline, our study cannot definitively say that Timeline is the root cause. But it appears that something occurred when Timeline rolled out that somehow de-prioritized content published through third-party APIs.

Until Facebook addresses this issue and fixes the part of its algorithm that penalizes third-party API tools, the Facebook platform is the only location to publish from to ensure your content is garnering the visibility it deserves. Hopefully the Facebook team remedies this soon so we social media marketers can use our time for more impactful social media strategizing. Until then, bid adieu to scheduled content.

Note: We believe this change in Facebook is affecting all third party tools equally (we tested HubSpot and another popular tool and the performance was similar between the two tools, but posting to Facebook manually was very different).

Do you use third-party APIs to publish your content? Have you noticed any changes, positive or negative, to your Facebook presence ever since you began using Timeline?

We actually found this difference in engagement before Timeline, so we stopped using the Hubspot tool on Facebook (we do use it for Twitter). Could also be that your ability to frame your blog past increases when you do it manually.

Interesting... I just started playing with HootSuite mainly for twitter posts but using the FB feature too... After reading this I will probably discontinue the FB posts until resolved... actually, I prefer posting manually on FB but was hoping to save some time... Thanx for the great info... an eye opener for sure...

This is a really interesting study and something we've noticed for several months, even before Timeline, but more consistently since. Working with small and medium business clients, I share the frustration of this Facebook algorithm change for businesses that don't have unlimited time and resources for social media. It is just not realistic, in many cases, for business owners to be manually posting throughout the day on Facebook, so I am hopeful that Facebook will realize that another adjustment is needed to accommodate smaller businesses.

Fred Cantu

It's not a 234% decrease. If you drop from 600 to 200 you lost 2/3 or 67%.

Think about it. If you drop from any positive number to zero you lose 100%.

Raquel

Like Marian, I also found this to be a problem well before Timeline. I had issues on my scheduled weekend or holiday posts that were done via Hootsuite. They would get very low impressions and hardly any likes whereas the manual ones I did during the week received a lot more attention. Months ago I employed a strategy to put the least important posts up on those off days.

At first I thought it was because of the Facebook feature that allowed users to hide certain third party apps. For example, if someone saw their friend was overusing the FourSquare app, they could hide the app from their feed altogether.

Interesting observation as I've just started using Hootsuite to "streamline" the social media posts following our scheduled blog posts. I'm going to rethink my SM roll-out approach.

I have to take exception with the claims of a 234% decrease. How can you have a decrease of more than 100%? I didn't see the exact numbers, but from the chart it looks like you went from 600 to around 180. This is a 70% decrease, not 234%. I think the error comes from reversing the math of an increase and a decrease - if you went from 180 to 600, that would be a 234% increase. [from-to/from] your math is [from-to/to]. Most importantly, 234% decrease is not meaningful, but when you tell me that I've lost 70% of my objective, I know exactly what that means.

Kingis

Did this take into account that 234% percent of that content could be spam that gets ignored simply because 3rd party apps are blocked by the same people that would like the other post?

If someone likes a FB page they usually want to see the posts this page displays, while they don't want to see 300 spam posts from these apps? Considered the fact before saying that FB itself penalizes the use of these "automators"?

Kingis

i.e. it is the false use of such solutions that create the problems with "ignored posts".

I've also heard this observation from other blogs. Social media marketing is a part of my responsibility as a small business owner but it's not the focus of my company so it doesn’t make sense for me to spend all day on social networks. Neither Twitter nor Facebook drive a lot of traffic to my website but I remain active on both because I can easily share on those networks each time I update LinkedIn (my main network). I’ll continue scheduling interesting things that I’ve found and would like to share but will visit the networks to share updates from my website (typically once or twice per week).

Denise Butchko

As a human, I tend to ignore or mentally discount automated posts on Facebook. I know it's not efficient to manually post, but on this platform, I really want to engage in a more "real" way. I automate on Twitter but have always felt it was less effective for Facebook and have not encouraged my clients to automate their FB posts. And I have the auto publish to FB turned off in Hubspot.

I don't necessarily agree with it. For companies that have several small business clients, it's not cost effective to log in through individual accounts and update on a daily basis. It's about how you cultivate your audience. You can't schedule and leave it alone, you have to build "likeable" content.

It's about the content you are creating and not necessarily where you publish it. Sure you will have surveys that argue both sides, but I still don't think in the larger scheme of things that it's necessarily a viable option to organically post everything. Especially if you're a marketing firm that deals with multiple clients.

Fatima

Thank you for sharing this HubSpot! I just had a meeting about this with my colleagues on Friday.

Barbara

How about using a delayed send email program (I use SendLater) and then post to FB via email. Or perhaps follwmethen.com. Not quite as elegant - but would get the job done.

This must have been somewhat of an issue all along. The third party apps have always had branded mentions at the bottom of posts near the time stamp and also there were frequent issues with how photos and text were displayed via third party sharing. Facebook has always made this difficult.

Felipe

I am a Social Media Manager for several brand pages, and I didn't want to assume pre-maturely, but I have also seen lowered engagement from HootSuite posts than on manual posts.

Pamela Vaughan

@Fred, Simon -- Thanks for calling that out. That was definitely a goof on our part. We were originally going to emphasize the percent increase rather than the decrease, and we neglected to fix the calculation when we decided to communicate it from the other angle. We updated the post to reflect the accurate representation of data. Thanks!

Marnie Macdonald

yes, I've noticed this too in the past few days since we switched to timeline.

I use Sprout Social and I don't think you can just hide posts by Sprout - I just tried. So I think for those saying it's because people have hidden the application, I'd be interested to know how that happens.

Marnie Macdonald

I should add that I saw a lift in engagement yesterday when compared to last week, however not back up to the pre-timeline levels just yet. Will be monitoring.

FB Ninjaz

We've spoken with officials from Facebook who have confirmed that PageRank no longer exists. GraphRank is the current algorithm and it's related directly to an individual user and has little to do with the pages unless that user engages with the content or is targeted by advertising.

Facebook does however throttle pages and reduce content and excessively automated or duplicate posting to be removed from a user's visible stream. This is true of posting through any medium even Facebook.com although some 'flagged' activities are physically impossible without the use a third party application.

Also take note that Facebook will allow you to 'hide all by app' for posts by users but not for posts by pages. This applies to posting from any app including independent apps. People posting should toss the RSS feeds and build engaging posts around images and engagement through comments and positive feedback.

Facebook isn't a science to be solved it's the human condition. Apply the same thinking to Facebook as to other activities that develop engagement and transaction. Have fun with it and remember that cute stuff and images are killing it all over the internet and have since the beginning. Broaden what you post and develop something meaningful. Be Helpful.

FB Ninjaz

You should change the title again to be transparent about what you did here:

I tried scheduling posts for a short time (way before the Timeline showed up), but had issues being able to post pictures and live links properly. I found that I had to go back and double check all my posts anyway. It may be time consuming to manually post on 3 different pages several times a day, but it actually works better for me that way. I just consider it another part of doing business online.

I find that concerning that timeline is good for big businesses, and bad for small. If budget is the issue, then it may not be specific to timeline. May be early to conclude that as it's relatively new.

Matt Shaw

To be fair, Facebook is making administering a Page easier with the Admin panel and the upcoming release of admin/user privileges. You lose engagement on posts made outside of business hours, but if you don't have a community manager monitoring your Page during off-hours, you don't really want engagement anyway. ::Shrug:: If you want the most out of the platform, use it the way it was meant to be used.

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It does and is affecting my posts through third party API's and it's frustrating! Posting manually may not be that hard but hey I gotta work too. And I have to schedule posts exactly on certain time of the day.

Simon Crompton-Reid

this isn't just a timeline thing - automation of the kind we all embraced 2-3 years back in the hope that we might manage to fit this stuff in around the rest of our lives simply doesn't work.It's SOCIAL media, and unless you take the time to put a human face on it, your response will be zilch!

Interesting... I've only used an API (Hootsuite) a couple of times for FB posts. Normally I do everything manually because our content is sometimes put together at the last minute. Plus I like to post things myself rather than an API. I feel bad for the brand managers who run several FB pages who now have to post manually for better results.

Mikey

This is a completely flawed study. Of COURSE if you post a message via a 3rd party app, delete it, then re-post the same content via native FB you'll get those results. If you were to swap the order and do the exact same thing but post via native FB first, your conclusion would be that posting via native FB decreases your page's likes by 67%.

Facebook acknowledged there was an issue with this back in October 2011. In November 2011, they fixed the issue (see http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/151722701585098 ).

Also, edgerankchecker.com also had a study where they concluded that "3rd party APIs have no penalty being imposed by Facebook after the implementation of their bug fix." That article is here: http://edgerankchecker.com/blog/2011/12/did-facebook-really-fix-the-3rd-party-api-penalty/

Anum Hussain

Hi Mikey!

Thank your for sharing! If you noticed, I actually referenced the edgerankchecker study you mentioned in the "What's Going On?" section of the post. I recommend checking out the conclusions made there--we're simply suggesting that this has resurfaced after acknowledging that it was once fixed.

I often use Selective Tweets to push updates from my twitter to my personal Facebook Profile, and my friends have reported that they don;t see those updates (or most of my foursquare checkins) even though they've not hidden updates from those apps, so its not just Hootsuite or Hubspot.

As a Page admin I get needing to maximize your time for multiple clients, but as a 'person', I know what I do when a Page schedules updates, and isn't even on FB... I tune out and drop the Page. Social is just that - social. If you arent engaging directly, Facebook seems to penalize you.

What made for the big discrepancy between the initial study and the present? I just started using hootsuite to post to my main social media profiles so I'm relieved it isn't hurting the sharing/engagement aspect of things.

That's discouraging for those of us seeking more efficiency via 3rd party tools, but honestly it's understandable from facebook's side of things. They obviously want all the direct interaction possible...afterall, you're not exposed to their paid ads if you're not directly on the site!